


Five Times Sam Kicked Some Ass

by embroiderama



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-19
Updated: 2010-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-06 11:31:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Sam Winchester has punched and kicked his way through life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Sam Kicked Some Ass

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the very sweet and patient [](http://pheebs1.livejournal.com/profile)[**pheebs1**](http://pheebs1.livejournal.com/) for Sweet Charity. Thank you to [](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/profile)[**dotfic**](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/) for the excellent beta.

1\. (1994)

"Hey, Fatchester!"

Sam pulled his t-shirt down over his stomach and bit down on the inside of his lip until it hurt. Dad said it was just a phase--that he was getting stronger under the padding, that he'd shoot up and thin out any day. Even Dean didn't make an issue of it, not since the time Sam lost it and started crying like a stupid baby in the back seat of the car.

But to the kids at this school he was just the new kid, the fat kid, the sixth-grade geek who changed for gym in a toilet stall any time he could get away with it. He tried to tell himself that it didn't matter, that they'd move on to a new school some day soon, but every day sucked harder than the last.

Maybe soon he'd be allowed to go hunting instead of just endlessly training--shooting arrows into hay bales, getting his punches blocked by Dad and Dean, their bodies feeling impervious as cinderblock walls.

Justin McElheney circled around the bench dividing the rows of gym lockers and poked Sam in the chest. "You get any fatter you'll have tits like my sister."

"Screw you!" Sam backed away until his butt hit the cool metal of his locker. He felt that itching inside of himself again. More like a twitching, starting from his stomach and working out to his fingers until he could hardly hold still.

"Aw, baby has a temper!" Justin taunted him, crouching down to get close--too close--to Sam's face. Justin moved his hand in again, tweaking the soft flesh of Sam's belly, and the feeling inside Sam snapped from a twitch to a shudder.

He yanked his arms up, pushing Justin's hands away from him and forcing the taller boy back a step, but it wasn't enough. Justin shoved Sam back, knocking Sam's elbow against the sharp edge of the locker's vents, and the pain exploded in Sam's arm, his brain. Distantly, he heard the gym teacher shouting, but it didn't make any difference. His muscles knew what to do, and before he could stop himself his fist flew up in an uppercut, slamming into Justin's jaw.

Justin's eyes went big and startled, whites showing around dark brown for a moment before his eyelids fluttered closed and he slumped back, hip landing on the bench before he slid to the ground.

\---

The principal's office was cold. Sam wanted to pull his legs up in front of him on the seat, but when he tried Dad put his hand on Sam's knee and held it down. It was weird seeing Dad in the office any time other than when he had to sign Sam up for classes. Weird how he looked too broad and bulky in the narrow chair, his clothes too dusty for Mrs. Martin's tidy office.

Sam apologized, and he meant it. He knew what he did was wrong--even if he hadn't known from the look on Mrs. Martin's face, on his father's face, he would have known from the way he felt sick looking at Mr. Haas holding a paper towel to Justin's bloody lip. His hand felt sore too, and from the ache in his knuckles he couldn't stop remembering the way it had felt to take Justin by surprise, put some of his hurt back where it came from. As he sat in that chair he flexed his fingers and realized he felt different than he had when he got up that morning. He thought maybe he was getting taller already.

~~~

2\. (1999)

Sam hadn't even known he'd been bitten.

He knew the Leucrota's teeth had ripped through his shirt, but there was no pain. Sam pulled away, rolling as he fell to give Dad enough room to safely make the kill shot. The ground was damp, and Sam felt clammy and a little cold as he stood up to watch Dean and Dad take care of the body. As they walked up the hill that took them out of the patch of forest they'd been hunting in, he started to warm up.

Riding home in the back seat of the Impala, Sam let his head lean against the window, and the cool glass felt good. He was tired from a long week at school, staying up late to study, and now trudging around outside half the day in shoes that were a little too big--bought big because he grew out of his last boots in less than six months. Sam didn't know anything was wrong until he opened the car door in front of the motel room they were staying in for the weekend.

He didn't know anything was wrong until he swung one leg out of the car and stood up and everything started spinning, sucking him down, and he held onto the top of the door even though it bit into his hand, bit into his underarm. He felt rough hands on his sides, gravel under his butt, then nothing.

Sam woke up to the splat of something cold and wet on his forehead. He turned his head away, trying to get rid of it, but a hand on his chin stopped him.

"Sam?" Dean sounded worried, so Sam pushed his eyes open. Dean's face loomed in front of him all pale and fuzzy, too close to focus on, but just past him there was something--something on the ceiling. "Sam!" Fingers snapped in his face, loud and annoying, and Sam dragged his eyes back to look at his brother.

"There's somethin'..." Sam tried to warn Dean, tell him that there was something on the ceiling behind him, but his mouth was so tired. His mouth had never been tired before, but his lips agreed with his tongue; they just didn't want to move.

"I know dude, you got bit. Dad's out getting what you need to feel better, just chill out." Dean lifted the damp cloth off of Sam's head and did something that made it colder again. "Literally, think cold thoughts, okay?"

"Huh?" At least he could say that without his tongue having to do any work.

"You're burning up. Don't want to cook that big brain of yours, okay? Dad'll be back soon."

Sam tried to think of how many times he had heard that in his life. When he got to number four the memory of Dad in his head tried to remind him to keep an eye on the thing on the ceiling, but his eyes had already slid closed, and the ground was wet so he slipped all the way back down into sleep.

"Sam!"

Sam went from absolute nothing, blackness, to fully awake in the time it took for his eyes to fly open. The edges of the room pulse and fluttered, but in the middle he could see the Thing. Something--a man, not a man--it crouched against the ceiling, body undulating with the pulse of the room.

It wanted to eat Sam's heart.

Sam twisted on the bed but he couldn't move far, stuck in the sucking mud underneath him. The Thing crept closer, jaws gaping wide, and Sam closed his eyes. He didn't want to watch his own chest torn apart. Didn't want to watch, didn't want--

He felt the creature's weight land on the bed around him, a hand on his chest, claws already pushing through his shirt, piercing his skin, and he kicked up, jamming his knees, his feet into the Thing's middle. It cried out and fell away, leaving Sam to breathe in the scent of his own blood for a moment before it attacked again, face twisting in rage.

It pinned down Sam's legs, dug its hand into Sam's chest again, and he screamed, hitting out with his fists, and then--

Sam woke up just enough to feel that he was lying on his back. When he tried to curl up onto his side he couldn't move; his arms were caught on something, and a flickering thought of mud went through Sam's head. He opened his eyes and saw towel-wrapped rope tied around his wrists. Breath stuttering through his chest, he looked down and saw the bed covers stretched tightly across his legs and a pair of black boots propped up on the mattress next to the lumps of his feet.

"Dad?" Sam was still swallowing against the dry hurt in his throat when the boots swung up and off the bed, and then John was leaning over him.

"Sammy, you with me?"

Sam blinked up into his father's tired face, eyes lingering on the bits of dried mud in his hair. "Yeah, I--why--" Sam pulled at the ropes holding him, but he couldn't move his arms more than a couple of inches. "What happened?"

John pressed a broad hand to Sam's forehead and looked at him intently for a moment before reaching to undo the bindings. "You got sick, but you're okay now." John finished untying the second rope then held Sam down with one hand before he could sit up. "You tell me next time you're hurt, you hear me? If I'd known you were bit--"

"Bit?" Sam asked, trying to search through the uncertain fog of recent memories. "I didn't--"

"Okay." John moved his hand around to Sam's back and helped him sit upright on the bed. "We'll talk later. Anyway, I'm pretty sure Dean'll have something to say about it."

John nodded over at the other bed where Dean slept curled around his middle rather than flat on his back the way he usually slept. A bruise darkened his cheek, and Sam frowned. He didn't remember anything about Dean getting hurt. "Dean okay?"

John walked over to the bathroom and came back with a glass of water. Sam sipped at it, looking back and forth between John and Dean. "He'll be fine. Might not enjoy standing up straight for the next day or two, but he'll live." John took the glass back when Sam was done with it. "I think his ego's as bruised as anything else, getting whooped by his little brother."

Sam tried to make his father's words mean something other than what they seemed to. Nothing would line up right in his head. "What did I do?"

"You got bit by the Leucrota, grazed by its teeth at least." John gestured at Sam's left arm and Sam twisted around to look at the bandage on the side of his bicep. "The venom made you sick, scrambled your brains for a little while. I don't know what you were seeing, but Dean tried to hold you down and got a little beat up."

Sam closed his eyes, trying to put the pieces together. He saw a flash of movement on the ceiling, pointed teeth, claws. He put a hand to his chest, feeling his heart pound behind his ribs. He felt his father's hand on his back and opened his eyes.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy about this, not glad that we didn't know you were hurt or that Dean got hurt, but uh--" John smiled then, just enough to crinkle the skin at the corners of his eyes. "It's good to know you can protect yourself if you need to."

Sam nodded and looked back over at Dean. He didn't want to ask but he really hoped he'd only got Dean in the ribs. If he'd kicked Dean in the nuts--Sam rolled his eyes and flopped back on the bed. If he'd kicked Dean in the nuts he was going to be stuck doing all the nastiest laundry for months.

~~~

3\. (2001)

The bus station in Kansas City smelled like burned pepperoni pizza and wet feet. Sam couldn't figure out if that was an improvement over the rotten fried chicken smell of the last bus he'd been on, but neither of them were likely to be the next year's featured candle scent at Hallmark.

After ten hours on a bus, Palo Alto was still almost two days away. Ten hours stuck on a bus with not enough room to stretch out his legs, with his shoulders curled in to avoid bumping the cracked-out looking lady next to him, and Sam's anger hadn't faded at all. An hour left to wait for the next leg of his trip, and there was no way Sam was ready to sit down in a molded plastic chair. He slung his backpack over one shoulder and started walking, looking around at the posters on the walls.

The bus station was big but unfortunately not big enough that the security guards didn't have their eye on him. Sam shook his head, pissed off that he wasn't even doing anything wrong, but still they had to watch him. Too big to fly under the radar, too intimidating. At least he knew how to go undetected when he had to.

Sam spotted a crowd of people hanging around the service door that led out to the back of the building and stepped into the thick of them, ducking down a little to hide himself from the closest guard's view. Everyone in the group was talking, arguing over some kind of mix-up, and none of them noticed when Sam opened the door and slipped through.

Coming from the glaring fluorescent buzz of the waiting area, the back lot was nearly pitch black. The bulk of the building blocked most of the lights from the highway and the nearby gas stations, and the unoccupied buses parked in rows dispersed most of the other light. Sam took in a breath of cooling night air as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light. He started walking down the narrow aisle between two buses, glad to have space to move without worrying about tripping over somebody's luggage or getting harassed by a rent-a-cop.

Sam walked quietly, careful not to crunch any loose pieces of blacktop under his feet. Suddenly, over the low hum of cars on the highway, Sam heard a girl scream, the sound quickly cut off. With a scuffle of feet on the ground, somebody bumped up against the side of a bus. Sam slipped his arm into the loose strap of his backpack and took off toward the sounds, still keeping his movements near-silent.

As he rounded the corner of a bus, Sam could see them--a small girl in leggings, a skirt, and a couple of shirts being held against a bus by a thick-chested middle-aged man in a shirt and tie. He had one hand wrapped around her arm and the other flat against her face, muffling her shouts as he spoke to her, his whole body pressed close to keep her from kicking. Sam couldn't hear the words, but the low threatening tone was clear.

"Hey!" Sam called out, walking faster now that he didn't have to be stealthy.

The sound broke the guy's concentration and he moved, giving the girl just enough space to lash out with her booted feet--one to the knee, one to the shin. He stumbled back a step and must have lost his grip because she took off, feet pelting the ground as she rounded the bus and ran out of sight.

"Son of a bitch!" The guy regained his balance and started to run after her, but Sam gripped his arm and swung him up against the side of the bus.

A good three inches shorter than Sam, the guy didn't look so big without a 100 lb. girl in front of him. He still looked like a dick though, and the sneer on his face made Sam feel sick with anger.

"Hey man, why don't you pick on someone your own size?" Sam pressed his arm against the guy's chest and pushed down, letting the weight of his pack back him up.

"What the fuck do you care? She's just a whore or somethin' I found sleeping back here."

Sam had seen the fear on her face, the pain twisting her mouth as he hurt her. She didn't deserve that just for sleeping somewhere this dick didn't like. Sam shook his head, not sure what he could do other than giving the girl more time to run away and hide better.

"What are you, her pimp?"

Sam didn't want to hear one more word. He swung out his fist, cracking his knuckles against the guy's jaw. The guy shot back with a hard smack to the side of Sam's head that made Sam's ears ring, the ground wobbly for a second until he got his feet steady again. He aimed his second shot at the guy's nose and heard the wet pop, the crunch of bone breaking under his hand.

"Fuck," the guy moaned thickly, stumbling sideways against the bus and holding a hand to his face to catch the blood leaking out of his nose.

Sam looked at the flow of blood, black in the shadowy darkness. He looked at his hands, looked at the cell phone clipped to the guy's belt. Following the path the girl had taken, he started running. He could barely see to make sure he didn't step in a pothole and wipe out, but he kept going, shaking with fear that the guy would call the cops. If the cops showed up, if Sam got arrested before he could get on his bus, he didn't know what he would do. He was eighteen; they could send him to jail.

He didn't want to have to call his father, such a failure that he hadn't managed to get more than two states away without finding trouble. He didn't want Stanford to find out he'd gotten into trouble and rescind his acceptance. Even just taking away the financial aid would be enough to finish college before he ever started.

Finally there was light, and Sam found himself at the back of a gas station. The door to the bathroom wasn't locked and Sam stumbled inside. He washed his hands and then looked at himself in the filthy mirror, imagined the police on the lookout for a tall boy in a red shirt.

At least he had his bag with him; he quickly stripped off his t-shirt and pulled on a blue button-down, slicked back his hair with his damp hands. Sam left the bathroom and walked around to the front of the gas station and then out onto the sidewalk. When he got back to the bus station, the only cop car sitting out front was the same one that had been there when his last bus pulled in. The cop was probably still chatting up the girl at the Greyhound counter.

Sam ducked inside and sat down in the middle of a row of chairs, and none of the security guards gave him more than a glance. Twenty minutes later, sitting on a bus that smelled like farts and cheap perfume, Sam closed his eyes and chewed on a Snickers from his pack. The last traces of adrenaline shook through him.

Less than two more days, and California was closer every minute.

~~~

4\. (2007)

Sam walked down the hall of the bank, swallowing hard against the noose he felt tightening around his throat. Ronald Resnick's dead eyes staring up at the ceiling and the way those people in the vault had looked at him--like a monster, like something that should be hunted down and killed--all of that put the rope around his neck. But the thing that tightened it, stealing his breath even as he picked up his pace, was the man from the FBI.

The FBI, outside the building, inside the building, crouching on top of him and Dean like a cat waiting for just the right moment to make the kill. Sam knew they wouldn't have much on him, probably couldn't hold him long, but Dean--Dean would be screwed so hard Sam could never get him loose. Dean would be convicted of murder and a dozen other charges that might or might not stick, but they would never let him go. And they would never let Sam see him.  
 Sam's mind spun--he'd never be able to get Dean out of prison, but the bank, even as surrounded as they were by thick walls, locked doors, and armed men, was not so impenetrable. _They would get out._ Sam made himself believe that, and the pressure around his throat loosened. They would get out.

At the end of the hall, Sam reached up and knocked a ceiling tile aside. With both hands wrapped around the frame, he pulled himself up, kicking off the wall to get himself out of sight. From his perch inside the ceiling, he watched as two SWAT team members peeled away from another pair and headed down the hall toward him. It was hard to judge from the overhead angle, but the taller of the two looked close to his height, if bulkier around the waist, the other one around Dean's size.

Sam moved silently, pulling the ceiling tile back further and then hovering over the empty square. His heart beat too fast, his arms trembling as his muscles flexed tight to hold the bulk of his weight in suspension, his knees bunched up against his stomach. _They would get out._ Sam breathed deep, reminding himself, and everything went calm and slow around him.

The uniformed men were directly below him, and Sam let himself drop. His weight knocked the taller man down, sent his weapon spinning across the floor. Their heads were protected but their body armor was meant to protect against bullets, not hand-to-hand combat. Sam spun, knocking the shorter man off his feet, then stepping on his chest before he took the rifle out of his hands. He kicked the man in the solar plexus to stun him, knocked his helmet off, and put him out of commission with the butt of the rifle.

The taller man struggled up, and Sam swung the rifle like a bat, catching him across the throat just below his helmet. As he bent over, choking, Sam pushed him down and straddled him. The man bucked wildly as Sam struggled to pull his helmet off, but finally the man's head was unprotected and Sam hit him hard, bouncing his forehead off the floor and knocking him out.

Everything stayed calm as Sam stripped the men down to their underwear, tied them up. His fingers trembled for a moment as he let himself take the time to check their pulses, and he had to concentrate, still his nerves once again so that he could feel that they were just unconscious. The larger uniform fit over his clothes, the uniform for Dean folded up against his chest.

When they got out, when he finally sat in the car next to Dean again, he put his hands on the dashboard and watched them, waiting for them to start shaking again, but they stayed steady, stayed still. The rope that had choked him earlier was still there lying slack around his shoulders, but he could breathe. That was enough.

5\. (2009)

Above the battle, Uriel watched. He had long ago allowed the flimsy spirit of his host to leave this plane but the shell was still strong, if any of these creatures of mud and stone could be truly strong. Many also called the man Samuel Winchester strong.

The human poets, weaving their imperfect words into garments to clothe their ignorance, had written that he was the angel who stood watch over thunder and terror. In the light of Uriel's fire, Samuel Winchester raised his hand and brought forth his dark thunder, waves of power that attacked the demon Lillith without harming the shell of the child host she had chosen. Uriel could see the child's spirit in tatters, her weak body pushed near its limits by the power of the demon inside. She was not yet dead, but Uriel could see little hope for her. Uriel had not seen hope in many human centuries.

The child's body choked, and the black smoke of Lillith spilled from her mouth, dispersing into a low fog. Samuel knelt on the ground, his head bowed low, but then he began to rise as the remains of Lillith settled into the earth. The child lay unmoving, and Samuel lowered himself to touch her face, her hands folded together in front of her as if in supplication.

Samuel gathered her into his arms and stood. Walking out of the fog, he looked first around himself and then up into the sky. "Uriel!" He called out, his hollow human voice heavy with command

Uriel had no orders to answer to Samuel, and yet he chose to descend, to stand upon the earth again. "I see what you've done," he said, waiting for the proper fear to spread across Samuel's face.

"Do you really see?" Samuel asked, blasphemous defiance in his eyes. "Can you see anything that wasn't written down for you?"

"Look to your manners." Uriel could turn this human to dust, but he would not disobey his orders.

"Look at this little girl!" Samuel held the child out. "She's alive and Lillith is dead. You wanted me to what? Gut her like a fish with that knife? And you call _my_ power evil?"

"She is already--" Uriel reached out to lay a hand on the child's head and felt her life force still inside. Her body was weak, yes, but already it was rebuilding itself. Her tattered spirit knitting together now that Lillith was gone. "You have been fortunate, this time."

"This time?" Samuel held the child to himself and shook his head. "Don't you understand? We're going to fight Lucifer, Dean and I, and we're going to win. I don't know if any of you angels are going to show up to help us, but if you don't we can do it on our own. As long as I use my power."

Uriel felt something stirring inside himself--not inside the shell of his host, but his own true being. "The power is not clean," he insisted. "You must repent."

"Repent." Samuel spoke the word like it was an apple seed to spit out on the ground. "I've been repenting for fifteen years. Why do you think you're stuck watching over me all the time? I've repented every time I used my strength, every time I hurt somebody. I've prayed to your God and asked for forgiveness and all I get is you, looking at me like I'm dirt."

"Do you suggest that you are done repenting?"

"No." Samuel's face hardened into a stony kind of sorrow. "I suggest that we work together and get rid of these demons, and then I will gladly repent every day for the rest of my life if it gets these powers out the picture and you off my back."

"I'll tell you what he's saying." Dean Winchester, his face bloody but his steps steady, walked up to stand next to Samuel and took the child from his arms. "He's saying that if we all work together we can kick some demon ass and then take a little vacation."

Uriel looked at the men standing in front of him and at the child they had saved from death. He looked at Castiel standing behind them with that strange beseeching that so often shone out of his eyes. Uriel recognized, suddenly, the reflection of that expression in the sensation he felt welling up inside.

Standing on the spot where the earth had swallowed the evil that was Lillith, Uriel realized that what he felt was hope.


End file.
